Office Managers Force Workers To Use A Sticker Chart For Their Feelings To Find Out If They’re Happy, Stressed, Or Angry
"Perhaps they had good intentions, but I find it unsettling."
insta_photos / Shutterstock.com Trying to strike a balance between a healthy workplace and productivity can be difficult, but great bosses prove that it’s not impossible. One employee, who took to the "Ask A Manager" blog, seemed to think that was the intent of her team managers when they implemented mandatory “sticker chart” check-in during meetings.
“They’ve created a feelings chart that has giant emojis representing various levels of being happy, stressed, and angry,” she wrote. “There are stickers of all our names that we’re meant to put next to the emoji representing how we’re feeling about work at the start and end of the day.”
One team's managers used a ‘mandatory’ sticker chart to gauge their employees’ feelings.
“If participation were fully voluntary, I’d consider it peculiar but largely harmless. However, it’s compulsory, and participation is sometimes enforced,” the employee continued in her post. “One day recently, they stalled starting a staff meeting until everyone’s stickers were placed.”
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As a mental health practice or a tactic for decompressing at home, a sticker chart makes complete sense — but practicing this kind of forced vulnerability in a professional space, where employees don’t owe you personal communication, is both unfair and unsettling.
“I’m selective about who I discuss my feelings with,” she said. “More importantly, in a team of our size, we most certainly have at least a few people dealing with mental health challenges or difficult personal circumstances. When I was struggling through work with depression… [this] would’ve made it more miserable.”
During meetings, managers would force employees to use the sticker chart to express their emotions with no follow-ups or real action items.
Before meetings or before allowing employees to clock out at the end of the day, managers would force employees to place a sticker on the “sticker chart” to express how they were feeling.
Unsure and confused about why they were consistently enforcing this practice, many employees voiced their discomfort.
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Strangely manipulative and bordering on a parent-child relationship, the sticker chart was a clear overstep by management and a distraction from the professionalism of work.
“It’s supposedly designed to help identify people who need extra help to get all their work done. However, I’ve had my sticker on a negative emotion for a week and haven’t received assistance. I’m not aware of anyone else who has received assistance based on where they put their sticker, either, so it’s unclear if the data is being used for anything."
Despite having seemingly good intentions, the employees felt disillusioned — ‘We’re struggling with personal issues and mental health.’
The employee argued that if the chart had been “optional,” it could’ve been a useful way to truly gauge employee well-being or, at the very least, give them an opportunity to reflect and decompress.
However, the mandatory nature of the sticker chart felt invasive. “I worry about how the responses could be used against us,” she wrote, “perhaps by the use of positive responses to silence people who believe the job is too stressful or difficult.”
Not only did it feel like an avenue to cultivate “fake psychological safety,” it was manipulative.
Responses to this employee’s write-in echoed a similar sentiment, arguing that the practice was nothing short of “ridiculous.” These employees are not kindergarteners. They shouldn’t feel pressured to unburden their intense emotions, open up to co-workers, or channel vulnerability while on the job.
“You are at work to work,” one wrote. “It feels intrusive and unproductive, and it would be particularly difficult for anyone who’s dealing with mental health challenges they don’t want to discuss as work. We’d like to use our meeting time [for] work-related items…. It is important for managers to care about employees’ well-being. This isn’t how you do it.”
Great managers prioritize giving their employees time away from work — whether to enjoy their personal time or to truly decompress.
Cultivating a safe space for communication at work is one thing; forcing employees to indulge in it is a toxic practice.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.